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Press Release: MACH Alliance Publishes Comprehensive Admissions Criteria to Provide Clarity for a Maturing Market
Underlines its promise to safeguard future-proof enterprise tech standards as composable reaches early majority status
16 October 2023 - San Francisco - New York - London - Amsterdam - Berlin - MACH Alliance, the group of independent tech companies dedicated to advocating for open, best-of-breed technology ecosystems, announced today it has published a new Admissions Playbook, adding rigor to the certification and admissions process as the market matures. The criteria highlights the stringency of certification and how fiercely the Alliance protects the purity of the certification for the clarity of enterprise technology buyers.
MACH certification is in place to provide buyers with complete confidence that the products and services they choose will enable a future-proof technology setup. The full criteria for certification, consolidated and described in detail in the Playbook, are solely in place to ensure enterprises get the swappable, future-fit technology they expect when committing to a MACH strategy.
Since its June 2020 inception, and having grown to almost 100 members, the MACH Alliance assessment criteria and scoring system have evolved as the organization gains experience and incurs new application considerations. The volume of member applications has grown more than 60 percent in three years, while the rejection rate for companies that fail to meet the criteria has remained stable at around 50 percent.
The increase in the number of applications reflects a maturing market. The Alliance is seeing more complex applications from companies who have reshaped their portfolio and product strategy from monolith to MACH and from companies with multiple products in their portfolio, for example. To prevent confusion for buyers, the criteria were recently extended to accommodate for companies that still maintain legacy products for existing clients, as long as the solutions being actively sold are 100 percent MACH compliant.
The new publication clarifies the complete neutrality and transparency of the certification process to reinforce market trust in the MACH certified mark. It also shows potential members exactly what’s required to achieve certification. It includes:
- Specific criteria for each membership category - ISVs, SIs and Enablers of varying size and maturity
- A detailed step-by-step overview of the admissions, appeals and rejection processes
- Clarification of what’s required during evaluation and the scoring system applied
The MACH Alliance is also working on a program to ensure all existing members are re-evaluated against the latest criteria to ensure they continue to meet MACH standards across what they are actively selling today.
Comments on the news:
“The objective behind the certification process hasn’t changed,” said Pascal Lagarde, a member of the MACH Alliance Advisory Board and Admissions Panel. “What we’re doing now is maturing and adding rigor to the process as the number of applicants grows. We’ve also grown the pool of experts involved in admissions to enable us to handle the increasing number and complexity of applications. As the market evolves, we must ensure we evaluate everyone in the same manner, and the Playbook holds us to that commitment.”
“We have always maintained the highest standards for certification. All criteria are specification and fact based, and we will continue to evolve the evaluation process while also ensuring all applicants are held to the same bar,” said MACH Alliance President, Casper Rasmussen. “This is our highest goal as the industry body, to ensure customers are clear they are buying true future-proof MACH solutions. We are intentionally 100 percent open about our admissions process as we strive for complete transparency and welcome feedback and questions.”
The Admissions Playbook is available here. To learn more about MACH Alliance, visit www.machalliance.org.
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About the MACH Alliance
The MACH Alliance is a [501(c)(6)] non-profit organization, governed by an independent board and does not endorse specific vendors, members or otherwise. The Alliance was formed in June 2020 to help enterprise organizations navigate the complex modern technology landscape. It aims to guide and show the business advantage of open tech ecosystems that are Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless. All MACH Alliance members meet certification principles that are published on the website.
The MACH Alliance welcomes technology companies and individual industry experts who share the same vision for the future. Learn more at machalliance.org, read here about MACH certification and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.
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